Half a Century eBook

Such schoolmasters must have imparted a flavor of
savagery to my Mexican war letters, which attracted
readers as they did visitors.

CHAPTER XX.

RIGHTS OF MARRIED WOMEN.

After mother’s death, I prosecuted to a successful
issue a suit for the recovery of the house in which
I was born. It stood on Water street, near Market,
and our lawyer, Walter Lowrie, afterwards supreme judge,
was to have given us possession of the property on
the 1st of July, 1845, which would add eight hundred
dollars a year to the income of my sister and myself.
But on the 10th of April, the great fire swept away
the building and left a lot bearing ground rent.
Property rose and we had a good offer for the lease.
Every one was willing to sell, but the purchasers
concluded that both our husbands must sign the deed.
To this no objection was made, and we met, in William
Shinn’s office, when my husband refused to sign
unless my share of the purchase money were paid to
him.

Mother’s will was sacred to me. The money
he proposed to put in improvements on the Swissvale
mills. These, in case of his death before his
mother, would go to his brothers. I had not even
a dower right in the estate, and already the proceeds
of my labor and income from my separate estate were
put upon it. I refused to give him the money,
and on my way alone from the lawyer’s office
it occurred to me that all the advances made by humanity
had been through the pressure of injustice, and that
the screws had been turned on me that I might do something
to right the great wrong which forbade a married woman
to own property. So, instead of spending my strength
quarreling with the hand, I would strike for the heart
of that great tyranny.

I borrowed books from Judge Wilkins, took legal advice
from Colonel Black, studied the laws under which I
lived, and began a series of letters in the Journal
on the subject of a married woman’s right to
hold property. I said nothing of my own affairs
and confined myself to general principles, until a
man in East Liberty furnished me an illustration,
and with it I made the cheeks of men burn with anger
and shame.

The case was that of a young German merchant who married
the daughter of a wealthy farmer. Her father
gave her a handsome outfit in clothes and furniture.
She became ill soon after marriage, her sister took
her place as housekeeper and nursed her till she died,
after bequeathing the clothes and furniture to the
sister; but the sorrowing husband held fast to the
property and proposed to turn it into money. The
father wanted it as souvenirs of his lost child, and
tried to purchase of him, but the husband raised the
price until purchase was impossible, when he advertised
the goods for sale at vendue. The father was an
old citizen, highly respected, and so great contempt
and indignation was felt, that at the vendue no one
would bid against him, so the husband’s father
came forward and ran up the price of the articles.
When her riding dress, hat and whip were held up,
there was a general cry of shame. The incident
came just in time for my purpose, so I turned every
man’s scorn against himself, said to them: